Dead Trouble

(2004)(The eighth book in the Ingrid Langley and Patrick Gillard series)A novel by Margaret Duffy

When novelist Ingrid Langley asks a renowned forensic pathologist for help with her new book, she little expects that he will soon end up on the slab. Professor John Norton is violently murdered at his home the evening after meeting with Ingrid to discuss the finer points of forensic pathology. When his wife discovers his mutilated body the next morning, his study resembles a bloody slaughterhouse. It looks very much as though someone has performed a post mortum on the pathologist.

Together with her friend DCI James Carrick, who is in charge of the investigation, and her husband Patrick, Ingrid sets about finding Norton's killer. But they are baffled as to what the motive could have been. Did his wife murder him because of his womanizing ways or in an attempt to get his life insurance? Or was it his daughter, enraged that her father did not save her marriage and her business?

Everyone in the Norton family seems to have hated the deceased pathologist for one reason or another, but it is Norton's decidedly dodgy brother Max and his detestable wife Sharleen who soon become the prime suspects. With a past history of theft, gun-running and drug-dealing, Max is certainly no angel, but is he a murderer? As the number of victims increase, it takes all the skills Ingrid and Patrick have learned from their time in MI5 to outwit the brutal murderer.

An intriguing, well-paced and action-packed crime mystery, 'Dead Trouble' will keep you guessing to the last page.